Safety on roads: Business runs like a family, opens store in Moses Lake

MOSES LAKE — If you need to be able to temporarily redirect traffic, or get a “no parking” sign, or you want a reflective, Day-Glo yellow shirt because you just need to be seen, well, there’s a place for that now in Moses Lake.

“We have a full line of safety apparel for men and women and a children’s clothing line as well,” said Thomas Barnes, the manager of Northwest Barricade & Signs Moses Lake, which opened its doors a month ago at 717 W. Broadway Ave.

“We also have full traffic control equipment. We have the cones, the barricades, and we have the signs. We make our own custom signs,” he added.

It isn’t just clothes and signs. Or cones and barrels. Or even personal protective equipment like masks and gloves. Northwest Barricade & Signs also provides services for companies and governments doing road work, construction or utility work, with signs, devices to reroute traffic and even traffic engineers to create custom plans to ensure traffic is routed safely around or through construction sites.

It’s work you’d think would be done by the construction companies themselves. But planning even small traffic disruptions can be difficult work that puts both construction workers and flaggers at risk. So it needs to be done right.

“Our job is to make sure everyone is safe. Their first line of defense is us. We want to make sure everyone out there is safe on the road,” Barnes said. “If we see any hazards that alarm us or concern us we’ll normally shut the project down and make sure things are safe enough to continue on.”

Northwest is really three companies, said sales manager Keone Padilla — a safety and apparel company (which will also print custom logos on shirts), a firm that makes signs, sells and leases traffic control barricades, and a company that provides workers to direct traffic at construction sites.

“We started out as a traffic control company, and then turned into construction supply,” he said. “A customer can order vests, hard hats, cones and signs from us and then we can take it to them.”

Prior to the arrival of Northwest in the region, there weren’t any companies locally that rented out construction and traffic equipment, Padilla said.

“All of the services we have are deliverable,” he said.

Among its ongoing clients, Padilla said, is the Grant County Public Utility District, which has been giving Northwest a lot of work as the PUD has expanded the county’s fiber optic network.

Barnes appreciates how risky directing traffic around construction sites, or in special situations, can be. A few years ago, at a previous job, he got hit while helping control traffic at the Gorge during a concert.

“I was hit by a drunk driver,” he said. “He hit me in the side and ran over my foot. I was not badly injured, but I was down for a bit. And my leg was broken.”

“We go out and stand in traffic all day,” Padilla added, noting he spent much of the morning flagging on Interstate 90. “What we do is very dangerous.”

Padilla also said the Northwest companies are “second chance employers,” willing to help former prison inmates restart their lives. Because it’s not that difficult for an ex-con to get a flagger’s license, he said.

“We’re felon-friendly,” he said. “We just want to give someone honest work.”

Both Padilla and Barnes said the company is run like a big family, which it kind of is, given Padilla is married to Northwest founder Dave Michael’s daughter. And his sister goes out with flagging crews every day.

“I have family in the streets. I have skin in the game,” he said.

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at cfeatherstone@columbiabasinherald.com.